Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology
Author: Chris Miller Year: 2022 Genre: Geopolitics
About This Book
Chip War traces how the semiconductor went from a niche military component to the most strategically important resource on earth. Miller, an economic historian, weaves together decades of engineering breakthroughs, corporate rivalries, and statecraft to explain why everything from missiles and cars to smartphones, data centres, and modern AI rests on a handful of extraordinarily concentrated chokepoints.
Key Insights
- Chips are the new oil: military and economic power now depend on computing power, and computing power depends on semiconductors.
- Radical specialisation: design happens in America, lithography machines come from ASML in the Netherlands, fabrication runs through TSMC in Taiwan, and assembly is spread across Southeast Asia. No country controls the full chain, and every link is a potential chokepoint.
- Taiwan concentration: the most advanced logic chips are overwhelmingly made by TSMC on an island China claims. That’s the “silicon shield,” at once Taiwan’s protection and its greatest vulnerability.
- States built this industry: from Cold War missile programmes to today’s CHIPS Act and export controls, governments have always decided who can make what, and where.
- Export controls are the new leverage: restricting China’s access to advanced chips and tooling has become the central instrument of US-China competition.
Why I Recommend It
It’s the clearest account I’ve read of the hardware layer beneath the software industry, and it provides real context for anyone working in tech or AI. Miller makes the economics and engineering genuinely gripping. The Financial Times Business Book of the Year label is well deserved.